Passing the buck
Posted on
I don't have much luck with deliveries. On the occasions a delivery company manages to find my house, they almost always seem to do so on a day when I won't be in it. Even more frustrating is that more and more of the companies I need to order things from have taken to using delivery companies that refuse to deliver at a time when I will be there.
In my current predicament, another delivery company has excelled itself by insisting that working hours are not just the best but the only feasible time to deliver to a residential address. The first clue that this particular disaster was waiting to happen was when the delivery driver called me at work to ask me if I was home. Days later I'm still in a sort of limbo whereby I am aware of the existence of a parcel but have no way of knowing where it is or if it will ever be delivered.
The advice the delivery company's website offers for such a situation is to rearrange delivery quoting the consignment number on the card they left when they attempted to deliver it. Since the driver called me on the first attempt and I informed him that I wasn't home, he (wisely) didn't bother going to the house to try, so I didn't have a card. I did receive one on the apparently mandatory second attempt the next day, however. (I do wonder how many people manage to make themselves available with just a day's notice.)
When provided with the consignment number, the delivery company's website offers two options, neither of which are helpful. Having failed to deliver on a weekday, I am presented with a choice of two other weekdays in the immediate future. Alternatively I can pick up my parcel from their depot in a completely different city some distance away. On either of the same weekdays. This is presumably because anybody who is not available at home on any given day is instead bound to be able to travel many miles to a completely different location.
Some companies offer Saturday deliveries by special arrangement. I wasn't aware that being at home on a weekend was a special circumstance, but in the world of delivering items, apparently I'm wrong. Judging by the surprise of every delivery company I've dealt with that I am at work during the working hours they deliver in, I'm an exceptional case. A Saturday delivery doesn't appear to be an option with the company I'm dealing with at the moment. They won't talk to me unless the sender has given them consent and the sender in this case (Orange—a massive multi-national company that really should know better) is unwilling to help.
Perhaps my annoyance is misdirected after all. A delivery company is perfectly entitled to select its own delivery hours. And in fairness it's not (usually) like they don't try to deliver. I wonder if my complaint should instead be with every other company in the world that sells goods to residential customers and doesn't think to use a delivery company that will deliver at a time when those customers will be available. You wouldn't have this problem with Royal Mail. They might try to deliver while you're out but they'll give you lots of options to make sure you got your parcel. Sadly I'm less confident about any other company...